Over the past decade, conventional marketing methods have evolved to make increasing use of the Internet, and in particular, on marketing materials presented on web sites. Printed materials, such as brochures and advertisements in publications typically now include a URL which the recipient of the material can enter in their web browser to access the marketer's web site which provides additional marketing materials and information.
While such combined print and web URL-based marketing efforts provide numerous advantages, they still suffer from disadvantages. For example, the user must read the URL from the printed materials and correctly enter that URL into their web browser. Problems occur with this often enough that a whole shadow industry has arisen wherein questionable commercial entities buy URL's for common misspellings of important company names and/or trademarks to take advantage of consumers who make such mistakes in entering URLs into their web browsers.
Another disadvantage is that marketers typically have no feedback with respect to the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. While they can tell when their web page is accessed, they do not know what advertisement resulted in the consumer visiting their web site or who the consumer is.